Page 40 - Top MMA News and Mixed Martial Arts Headlines

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A Strawweight bout between Paige VanZant and Bec Rawlings is the latest addition to August’s UFC on FOX 21 lineup.
UFC officials today announced the bout.
VanZant (6-2 MMA, 3-1 UFC) competes for the first time since being dominated en route to a submission loss against Rose Namajunas at UFC Fight Night 80 in December. Although she’s been out of fighting competition, “12 Gauge” has been plenty busy outside the octagon with a noteworthy appearance on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Former WWE superstar Phil “CM Punk” Brooks once again has a UFC debut date set against Mickey Gall.
Brooks (0-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) announced on the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast he would face Gall (2-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) in a bout that was expected to take place at UFC 199 or 200 but was delayed when he suffered an injury.

Invicta FC was targeting July 29 for its next event, and was hoping Cristiane Justino would headline.
But despite leaving a spot open for “Cyborg,” as of now the promotion’s featherweight champ isn’t on the card. Instead, strawweights Alexa Grasso (7-0) and Jodie Esquibel (5-1) will headline Invicta FC 18, the promotion recently announced.

The UFC makes its first visit to Cleveland this September, and Ohio’s own UFC heavyweight champ Stipe Miocic headlines the card, taking on former DREAM and Strikeforce champion Alistair Overeem.
UFC 203 takes place Sept. 10 at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena with a main card on pay-per-view following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.
Tickets for the event range from $50, plus fees, in the upper level to $300 plus fees for cageside seats. Additional ticket price levels include $200, $125, $90 and $75, plus fees.

Former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre stunned the mixed martial arts world on Monday when he announced on The MMA Hour that he was "ready" to end his near three-year hiatus and return to the Octagon for one last good run. But not only did St-Pierre have comeback plans to share, he also had an opponent in mind for his first fight back -- a title challenge against the man currently tied with him for the most wins (19) in UFC history, middleweight beltholder Michael Bisping.

His 2014 stoppage win over Aleksander Emelianenko stands out as his best to date, and it’s not terrible. But it is 2014 Aleksander Emelianenko, his last pro fight before getting locked up following a series of troubling and eventually horrific incidents. It’d be fair to say, to date, that Sosnovskiy is relatively untested against good competition.

"She will be bonused for that fight," White said on the Unfiltered podcast. ‘There were so many good fights that night, people were going crazy, ‘how did she not get [a bonus],' and it's true. Me and Lorenzo were saying, how the hell did that skip us, she should have got a bonus.

Gabudullin, a former M-1 Global fighter and training partner of the 'Last Emperor,' explained that Maldonado was supposed to announce his intent for an appeal within 40 minutes after the conclusion of the EFN 50 main event.
"There were no protests in the judicial decision of the Union of MMA in Russia and the World Association of WMMA side Maldonado not filed in officially prescribed manner."

Several days ahead of the anticipated Fedor vs. Maldonado showdown, the Russian MMA Union assigned the three judges who would be responsible for the scorecards in the main event: Evgeny Gribkov, Alexey Gorokhov, and Maria Makhmutova.
The announcement came as a surprise to many within the industry. The three officials were Russian natives for a contest that pitted a Russian against a Brazilian fighter. The shocking elements was that the Russian MMA Union was actually headed by Fedor himself. The legendary fighter is the unanimously voted president of the association several years prior and still maintained that role behind the scenes.

It appears that UFC president Dana White is still fuming over the fallout from UFC 199.
During the PPV show, MMA journalist Ariel Helwani was escorted out of the building ahead of the Michael Bisping vs. Luke Rockhold main event for accurately reporting that Brock Lesnar had signed with the UFC. The promotion's decision evidently garnered more mainstream attention than they had anticipated, which eventually led to them reinstating MMAFighting.com's credentials following a short-lived lifetime ban.
While Helwani and the remainder of the team are no longer banned from UFC events, they are far from being in Dana White's good graces, as he revealed on the first episode of 'UFC Unfiltered' with Matt Serra and Jim Norton. (Audio starts at the 47:00 timestamp)

The world’s largest MMA promotion may eventually change hands at some point, but UFC officials insist that no such transaction has taken place at this time.
FloCombat.com today reported that UFC officials had accepted a bid of $4.2 billion from “a group consisting of WME-IMG, the Dalian Wanda Group, The Kraft Group and Tencent Holdings.” However, UFC Vice President of Public Relations Dave Sholler said those reports are untrue.
“FloCombat.com’s report indicating that the UFC has been sold is false,” Sholler told MMAjunkie. “We’ve communicated that to our staff members tonight via an internal memo.”
MMAjunkie obtained the email sent to all UFC employees denying the legitimacy of the FloCombat.com report and signed by UFC co-owner and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta.
“A report today by FloCombat.com indicating that the company has been sold is false,” the email read. “This follows other false speculation in the press recently.
“Such misrepresentation of facts in the media negatively impacts our business, staff members and athletes. We have instructed our attorneys to investigate and take all appropriate legal actions against the parties publishing and contributing to these false stories.
“With International Fight Week and the historic UFC 200 rapidly approaching, we look forward to once again delivering a series of events that our fans won’t soon forget. We appreciate your hard work, diligence and commitment, and thank you for your focus as we continue to take the sport to new heights.”

Georges St-Pierre, a man widely considered to be the greatest welterweight to ever compete in mixed martial arts, is ready to give it one more good run. St-Pierre announced Monday on The MMA Hour that he has decided to end his nearly three-year hiatus and return to the Octagon, provided that his management and the UFC are able to come to terms on a deal.

It sounds like the sale of the UFC is marching ahead successfully. FloCombat reports that sources close to the company are saying that a group of investors have put together a $4.2 billion bid for the MMA organization and that Zuffa has accepted it.
This potential new ownership group apparently consists of WME-IMG, the Dailan Wanda Group, The Kraft Group, and Tencent Holdings. Alongside this news are reports that, despite selling his shares as part of the deal, President of Operations Dana White would be staying on in his role with the promotion, apparently receiving a new stake in the company as well.

Say whatever you want about Stephen Thompson, but he clearly isn't a man who prefers the easy road.
Thompson not only called for his shot at the UFC welterweight title after capturing a unanimous decision over Rory MacDonald at UFC Fight Night 89, but he also made it clear that he would rather face the incumbent champion, Robbie Lawler, rather than challenger Tyron Woodley after the two American Top Team teammates meet with the belt on the line at UFC 201.

Donald Cerrone is all about chasing that paper. And it sounds like he isn't too happy with where he's at in the race.
After being read a list of his impressive accomplishments in the UFC, "Cowboy" slammed the promotion -- with a smirk on his face -- about how much he's getting compensated. Just a few hours earlier Saturday, Cerrone had walked over welterweight stalwart Patrick Cote en route to one of his most impressive wins.
"God, that all sounds nice," Cerrone said at the UFC Fight Night: MacDonald vs. Thompson post-fight press conference. "According to my pay, I don't mean sh*t to the UFC. But we'll see. Maybe I'll talk to [UFC president] Dana [White] after this and see if we can figure that out."

Chad Mendes had not commented at all since being flagged by USADA. Until Saturday.
The perennial UFC featherweight contender tweeted about his situation Saturday, saying he would "own it" and "pay for it."
The UFC announced that Mendes (17-4) was facing a potential USADA anti-doping violation June 10. That usually means a fighter failed a drug test or informed USADA that he or she unknowingly took a banned substance. USADA won't release any more information on the situation until the adjudication process is over.

Fabio Maldonado came close to finishing Fedor Emelianenko in the main event of Fight Night Global 50 on Friday night, and his team isn’t happy with the majority decision loss in St. Petersburg, Russia.
One judge scored the contest a draw (28-28), while two others saw it 29-28 in favor of Emelianenko, scoring the first round a 10-9 in Maldonado’s favor despite the fact that the Brazilian almost knocked the legendary heavyweight out.
Maldonado’s manager Stefano Sartori released a statement to MMA Fighting revealing that they will appeal the "strange" loss to Russian MMA Union, which assigned the judges -- and is headed by Emelianenko.

Derek Brunson won't be competing against Gegard Mousasi at UFC 200. The news was first reported by Sherdog on Sunday, and was later confirmed by MMA Fighting.
Brunson, who's currently ranked No. 11 in the UFC's middleweight rankings, was forced to pull out of his bout with former Strikeforce middleweight champion Mousasi for unknown reasons. The 32-year-old middleweight is currently 6-1 in his past seven trips to the octagon. He last fought on February at UFC Fight Night 83, defeating Roan Carneiro. His fight with Mousasi was to serve as a UFC Fight Pass preliminary bout.